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The Genesis 



OF THE 



Whig Party in Illinois 



BY 

C. M. THOMPSON 

University of Illinois 



Reprinted from the Transactions 

of 

The Illinois State Historical Society 

1912 



The Genesis 



Whig- Party in Illinois 



C. M. THOMPSON 

University of Illinois 



Reprinted from the Transactions 

of 

The Illinois State Historical Society 

1912 



Springfield, III. 

Illinois State Journal Co., State Printers 

i. ®r ft. 



MAR t $ 1914 



^ 






ENESTS OF THE WHIG PARTY IN ILLINOIS. 

(.By C. M. Thompson, University of Illinois.) 



If meetings of this kind are to be productive of the greatest amount 
of good, those attending and taking part must have no hesitancy in 
being critical, for they, of all people, show by their presence here, that 
they are vitally interested in the history of our State; and in no better 
way can the chaff, which has too long encumbered, be separated from 
the grain. Thus the writer invites the most searching criticism, in the 
sincere hope that several new ideas expressed in this paper may be dis- 
proved, if they are erroneous. 

The political leaders in Illinois were divided into two factions 
even before the State was admitted to the Union in 1818, and despite 
the fact that a majority of the leaders of these factions was dead, and 
many of the issues over which they struggled forgotten, when the term 
Whig came to be used to designate one of the great political parties, 
there is a continuity of principles and personnel, striking enough to 
warrant the belief, that territorial political alignments had considerable 
influences in determining the make-up of the Whig and Democratic 
parties in Illinois. 

As is generally well known, the leader of one faction was Governor 
Ninian Edwards, and supporting him were Nathaniel Pope, Daniel 
Pope Cook, Thomas C' Browne, and Pierre Menard. The opposing 
faction Avas under the nominal leadership of Shaclrach Bond, with 
whom were associated Jesse B. Thomas, Elias Kent Kane, John Mc- 
Lean, and Michael Jones. With the coming of statehood, and the con- 
sequent increase in the number of offices to be filled, evidence at hand 
points to a reconciliation of factions on the basis of a division of public 
emoluments. Every factional leader of the first rank received office; 
Bond and Menard became Governor and Lieutenant Governor, re- 
spectively; Jones was elected to the State Senate; Thomas and Edwards 
were chosen United States Senators; Phillips and Browne were given 
places on the bench of the State Supreme Court, while Pope became a 
member of the United States judiciary; Kane was appointed Secretary 
of State by Governor Bond ; McLean was elected to Congress ; and Cook, 
who was the unsuccessful aspirant for the sole congressional seat to 
which Illinois was then entitled, was appointed Attorney General. 

The .year 1819, saw a revival of the old struggle. Edwards, whose 
term as United States Senator expired March 1, 1819, was re-elected, 
but not without considerable opposition on the part of the Bond faction, 
which supported Jones for the place. Later in the year Cook and Mc- 
Lean, for the second time, contested for congressional honors, with Cook 



the victor, due to his opposition to the proposed Missouri Compromise 
as well as to his tremendous personal influence over the voters. 

In 1820 the Bond faction brought out Kane as Cook's opponent. 
Both candidates expressed themselves as favorable to the proposition to 
make Missouri a state without restrictions. The election resulted in a 
landslide for Cook, who received the support of the old Edwards faction, 
as well as that of the lately arrived settlers in the northern counties. 

The August election of 1822, witnessed a general clash between the 
factions. Both Coles and Phillips, who were candidates for Governor 
in that year, were distasteful to the Edwards people, so much so that 
Edwards, through Hooper Warren, brought out Thomas C. Browne as 
a candidate. The contest Avas very close. Coles carried the northern, 
counties, in which, on the whole, the people were lately arrived and 
hence not adherents of either of the old factions; Browne and Phillips 
divided the vote in the southern part of the State, the former being 
supported by the Edwards faction, while Phillips very generally received 
the votes of the Bondites. Both factions voted irrespective of their 
slavery predilections, and the generally accepted opinion that Browne 
was brought out as a stalking horse by the slavery element in an attempt 
to elect Phillips, is not supported by reliable evidence. Cook, who was 
no less zealous in his opposition to slavery than was Coles, carried 
seventeen counties, of which number eight supported Phillips or Browne. 
The inconsistency of the position of those who contend that the guber- 
natorial election was on the basis of slavery, and that Browne was a 
slavery candidate, is further shown by the fact that Hooper Warren, an 
uncompromising opponent of slavery in any form, supported Browne's 
candidacy. In this election began a third party with its principal 
strength in Sangamon and adjoining counties, and a party which was to 
continue for more than a decade to hold the balance of power between 
the various factions of the Democratic party. 

The Bond faction was characterized by the great number of am- 
bitious politicians within its ranks. Although this faction was defeated 
in the gubernatorial election of 1822, it succeeded in electing a majority 
to the General Assembly. Being favorably disposed toward slavery the 
members of that faction, aided by not an inconsiderable number of 
others who favored any plan to worry the new executive, succeeded in 
carrying through the General Assembly in February, 1823, the famous 
proposition to call a Constitutional Convention. 

The election of 1824, which decided this momentous question, re- 
sulted in a complete victory for the anti-slavery forces. Not only was 
the convention proposition defeated by a large majority, but Cook, 
against whom the conventionists had pitted Governor Bond, was elected 
to Congress. The counties that had supported Coles in 1822, declared 
against the convention, but the anti-convention vote in those counties 
would have been of no avail without the assistance of the anti-slavery 
element in the southern part of the State. Although Coles had received 
but 4 per cent of the entire vote cast in Alexander County in 1822, the 
convention forces were able to carry that county by only a small ma- 
jority; and the election returns of Gallatin. Johnson, Franklin, Wayne. 
Randolph and Jefferson counties show that hundreds who voted for 
Browne or Phillips in 1822, voted two years later against the call for a 



convention to amend the State Constitution. In none of the counties 
named had the Coles vote been greater than 15 per cent, yet the vote 
against slavery varied from 18 per cent in Gallatin to 45 'per cent in 
Randolph County. The counties of Lawrence and Union, which had 
given Browne and Phillips together more than 82 per cent of their entire 
vote in 1822, two years later rejected the convention proposition by a 
vote of three to two. On the whole, communities favoring the call for 
a convention, supported Bond for Congress, the notable exceptions being 
in those in which Cook had a strong personal following that clung to 
him despite his utterances against the extension of slavery. 

On account of the all-absorbing slavery question, the Presidental 
election of 1824, received scanty attention at the hands of the voters. 
While contemporary accounts differ as to the relation between the con- 
ventionist and anti-conventionists on the one hand, and the Presidential 
candidate on the other, the vote indicates that Adams and Clay had 
their greatest strength in those counties in which the anti-conventionists 
had a majority, while Jackson's supporters were on the whole supporters 
of the proposition to call a convention. Thus there seems to be estab- 
lished by the election of 1824, a line which divided roughly the voters 
into two groups, each having a clearly marked preference for certain 
men and measures. One group, which comprised the voters of the 
northern counties and the Edwards strongholds in the southern part of 
the State, supported Cook, Adams or Clay, and opposed the Convention, 
while the other group, which was dominated by Bond, Kane, McLean and 
Thomas, supported Bond, Jackson or Crawford, and favored the Con- 
vention. 

As in 1822-4, so was the General Assembly of 1824-6 completely 
dominated by the Bond faction. As a result of this political affiliation, 
two of the leaders of that faction, and zealous slavery men, McLean and 
Kane, were elected to the United States Senate. A writer on this period 
has said concerning this election that "there is nothing stranger than this 
in our political history." The explanation for such a seemingly strange 
paradox rests not upon a study of the Convention parties but rather 
upon older political alignments. The majority of the Legislature that 
elected McLean and Kane, was not necessarily pro-slavery and pro- 
convention because it elected men of that belief to office, for the issue 
of slavery and convention had ceased to have life after the August elec- 
tion in 1824. The majority was a Bond faction majority, and nothing 
was more natural than to honor its two greatest leaders by electing them 
to the United States Senate. 

One of the central figures in the election by the House of Repre- 
sentatives of Adams to the presidency in 1825, was Cook, sole Congress- 
man from Illinois. Cook is said to have declared before the presidental 
election in 1824, that if the selection of a president should devolve upon 
the House, he would cast his vote for the candidate that received a 
majority of the popular vote in Illinois. Jackson carried two electoral 
districts, the Second and Third, but neither he nor any other candidate 
received a majority at the general election. As a result of this inde- 
cisive vote, Cook felt himself free to use his own judgment in making 
a selection from the three candidates before' the House, and for various 



and valid causes, one of which was his admiration for the man, he cast 
the vote of Illinois for Adams. 

The election of Adams, or better to say the defeat of Jackson, 
determined largely the political alignment in the United States for the 
next thirty years, and on account of Cook's vote, is this statement par- 
ticularly true of conditions in Illinois. As soon as the people learned 
through the medium of Jackson's astute managers, that the old hero 
had been cheated out of his rights and the will of the people had been 
thwarted, by a corrupt bargain between Adams and Clay, they rallied 
to the Jackson standard. Cook's close affiliation with the old anti- 
convention party had the effect of throwing headlong into the Jackson 
camp bis opponents, who, on the whole, had been convehtionists and who 
owed allegiance to Bond, Kane and McLean. The Edwards faction, 
which had been in temporary alliance only with the anti-conventionists, 
and which, after the August election of 1824, had set about to reorgan- 
ize upon old lines, very generally favored Jackson's candidacy, and 
Cook's vote for Adams alienated many of his oldest and best friends. 
The Coles party had voted for Adams, and his election by the House met 
the approbation of that element. 

Thus growing out of the convention contest of 1824, and the presi- 
dential election of 1825, were three more or less distinct parties: the 
ultra, or, as was more familiarly called "the whole hog" Jackson party; 
a party favoring Jackson's candidacy, the members of which were gen- 
erally known as "milk and cider" Jackson men; and finally the anti- 
Jackson party, which was confined principally to the northern counties. 
Although the lines are not hard and fast, one may say with confidence 
that the "whole hog'' and "milk and cider" factions of the Jackson party 
were continuations of the old Bond and Edwards factions respectively, 
and that the anti-Jackson party was made up of the newer elements, 
which knew nothing of the political alignments of earlier days. 

The gubernatorial election of 1826, resulted in a victory for a 
political coalition of the anti-Jackson party and the "milk and cider" 
faction of the Jackson party. Edwards was elected governor, but the 
closeness of the election indicates quite clearly that the anti-Jackson 
party was hopelessly in the minority, and that its only hope for success 
lay in playing off the factions of the opposition one against the other. 
At the same time Cook was beaten by Joseph Duncan, a young "whole 
hog" Jackson man, who had a good military record behind him. _ The 
defection of the Cook supporters was general all over the State. A 
county here and there gave him an increased majority over 1824, but 
this was offset by a few other counties which showed a marked falling 
off in their support. Cook uniformly ran behind Edwards except in 
those counties where his popularity still exerted its old time influence : 
and it is on account of this tremendous influence that he was able to 
make a valiant fight against overwhelming odds. 

In the presidental election o.f 1828, less than fifteen thousand votes 
were cast out of a population numbering considerably over one hundred 
thousand, and Jackson's majority of almost five thousand is evidence 
of a temporary union of the two Jackson factions in support of his 
candidacy. The "whole hog" candidate for Congress, Duncan, was 
elected over George Forquer, a recognized leader of the moderate Jack- 



son faction, and a close personal and political friend of Governor 
Edwards. The apparent inconsistence in selection of adherents of 
different factions raises the suspicion that the Jackson managers saw 
to it that only ultra Jackson men should go to Congress; it also goes 
a long way in demonstrating the political sagacity and popularity of 
Edwards himself. 

The next gubernatorial campaign began more than twelve months 
before the election in 1830. The candidates were William Kinney, rep- 
resenting the '"whole hog" Jackson faction, and John Reynolds, who, 
at that time, was a confessed "milk and cider" Jackson man. Kinney, 
expecting to ride into office on a wave of Jackson enthusiasm, was ex- 
travagant in his praise of the President. Keynolds with all his faults 
proved that he was a better politician than his opponent by securing the 
support of many radical Jacksonites, without alienating that element in 
the State opposed to the old hero. Eeynolds' strength was principally 
in the extreme northern, western and southern parts of the State, and 
in the central counties of Sangamon, Morgan and Macon. Despite Kin- 
ney's defeat, Duncan who was no less a radical than was Kinney, was 
elected to Congress by a large majority. Thus again was the radical 
wing of the Jackson party beaten by a coalition of the "milk and cider" 
Jackson men and the anti-administrationists. 

During the six years following the State election of 1S30 the 
political alignments in Illinois underwent radical changes. The position 
occupied by the "milk and cider" Jackson element was not only illogical 
but untenable, and its ability to maintain itself as an organization de- 
pended almost entirely upon the chance election of two of its leaders 
to the office of Governor. Its midway position between the radical 
Jackson faction on the one hand, and the anti-Jackson party on the 
other, made it a convenient and fruitful recruiting ground for its more 
extreme opponent. The election of Jackson for a second term, which 
was a complete vindication for the affront offered the old hero in 1825, 
served to cool the ardor of the more extreme supporters of the President, 
and bring them into more complete harmony with the radical members 
of the moderate Jackson party. The intrusion of A^an Burenism into 
national politics, and the dogmatic distribution of office in the State by 
the national administration, tended to force the lukewarm supporters 
of Jackson into the ranks of the opposition, which included all the 
elements opposed to Jackson and Van Bureu, and which took on the 
name Whig in 1834. 

Thus during the territorial period the political interests of the 
people of Illinois were taken up with the personal strife between the 
two factions, one headed by Governor Edwards, and the other by Shadrach 
Bond. These factional contests extended over into the period of state- 
hood, but with the attempt to introduce slavery info the State in 1823-4, 
new elements came into political leadership, and the result was a tem- 
porary change in political alignments. On the whole the Bond faction 
supported the proposition to legalize slavery, while the Edwards faction 
temporarilv allied itself with the anti-slaverv party led by Governor 
Coles. After the slavery question had been decisively settled in 1824, 
the two old territorial factions underwent a reorganization on the basis 
of loyalty to Jackson and his advisers. Bond and his followers becoming 



what are commonly known as "whole hog" Jackson men, the Edwards 
faction taking a more moderate, or "milk and cider" position. The 
third party, which had made its appearance first in support of Coles in 
1822, and afterwards in opposition to the proposition to call a conven- 
tion, became the Adams, or anti- Jackson party, and it was around this 
party as a nucleus that the later Whig party grew. During the decade 
following 1824 the "whole hog" Jackson men succeeded in electing their 
candidate for Congress, but the "milk and cider" faction, aided by the 
anti- Jackson party, won every gubernatorial election during the de- 
cade. In the course of time the moderate Jackson faction began 
breaking up. The more radical members went over to the "whole hog" 
faction, which Avas growing less radical in its views and these two 
elements uniting became the nucleus of the later Democratic party, while 
the extremely moderate "milk and cider" Jackson men allied themselves 
with the anti-Jackson party. 

One of the forces contributing to bring about the union of the two 
Jackson factions, was a change in the personnel of leadership. Before 
1833 Edwards, Bond, Cook and McLean were dead; Thomas, Phillips 
and Sloo had removed from the State, while Browne, Pope and Smith 
were on the bench; and their places in leadership were tilled with such 
men as John Eeynolds, Adam W. Snyder, and others who knew little 
about the old animosities between the leaders and ca"red lesb. 

The anti-Jackson party had its beginning, although unconsciously, 
in the convention contest of 1823-4. Its first accessions were from 
among the friends of Clay, who had supported the convention move- 
ment, but who believed that Jackson's denunciation of Clay's attitude 
toward the election of Adams was little less than prescriptive. The 
second accession came principally from among those members of the 
Edwards faction who considered the defeat of Cook in 1S26 as a trav- 
esty of justice, and the beginning of political persecution. The high- 
handed manner in which Jackson's unofficial advisers carried out 
measures and policies caused a slight defection from the Jacksonian 
ranks, the most notable in Illinois being Senator Thomas. Jackson's 
continued opposition to federal aid for internal improvements was 
another cause of dissatisfaction, which resulted in alienating support 
in many sections. While all these disturbing elements were driving 
supporters from the Jackson party, it does not necessarily follow that 
all of them were to be found immediately in the ranks of the anti- 
Jackson party, for the "milk and cider''' faction served as a sort of half- 
way house for those who, from personal or political reasons, feared to 
come out openly against Jackson. Beginning with the opposition to 
Van Buren as Vice Presidential candidate in L831, the anti-Jackson 
party received a constant stream of recruits into its ranks, and the 
attack on the United States Bank, followed by the withdrawal of de- 
posits confirmed the -rowing suspicion of man} thinking men. of whom 
Joseph Duncan is th<' besi example, thai Jackson's administration, not 
necessarily Andrew Jackson, was a menace to die well-being of the 
count ry. 

When the Whig party emerged in 1834. n contained all these fac- 
tions and probably more, and when on, asks why the Whigs were in- 



clined to be a crowd rather than a compact party with definite purposes, 
the answer may be found by pausing in the examination of the large 
and diversified parts of the national organization and giving some atten- 
tion to an analysis of typical geographical units such as was Illinois. 



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